Wednesday, January 05, 2005

BREAKING | The Conyers Report: What Went Wrong in Ohio

Below is the Executive Summary of the critical Conyers Report on the OhioElections. I post it here to expand its readership as much as possible, soconcerned am I that its contents will be ignored by the mainstream newsorganizations. But we must use it to force one of our senators to stand withthe Black Congressional Caucus and Conyers to challenge Ohio's electors.

A personal note here: John Conyers and I worked together with other localDemocrats to reform the corrupted government of a small inner city suburbsurrounded by the City of Detroit known as Highland Park, Michigan in themid-1970's. At the time, Highland Park's mayor was a black Republican by thename of Robert Blackwell, who had peppered this little city (birthplace ofHenry Ford's mass production of cars) with adult bookstores, movie theaters,and other exploitive businesses that blighted its corridors. Blackwellappeared to feed off making Highland Park's unique urban island locationinto a center-city red-light district where money could be made and extortedat the price of civic pride and economic stability. HP was then about 85%black residents, supplemented by a few whites and several Middle Easternimmigrants. Only the old bureaucrats were still white.

Blackwell's in-your-face attitude and Tammany Hall-like machine finallyprovoked local power Democrats into financing the overthrow of Blackwell'slittle money-printing scam. They picked a black Laborer's Union businessagent who lived in town and had made some noise to stand for electionagainst Blackwell and result was the election of Jesse Miller, and therecruitment of two outsiders to help him run the city (the mayor being thefull time executive). I was one of the two. I became Miller's chief ofstaff; the other guy, a black political operative out of Ohio stategovernment, Troy Grigsby, became his political director, and we remainedclose to Conyers as we attempted major reforms.

The rest of the story is too long for this page, but the irony visiting ustoday is that, once again, Conyers is fighting a black Republican namedBlackwell, Ohio's discredited Secretary of State for his attempts atsuppressing Ohio's black vote in this last presidential election. I wouldnot be at all surprised if Kenneth Blackwell and Robert Blackwell springfrom the same genetic well.

What strange turns life can take.

Andy Driscoll

BREAKING | The Conyers Report: What Went Wrong in Ohiohttp://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010605Y.shtml

Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff

Wednesday 05 January 2005

Executive Summary

Representative John Conyers, Jr., the Ranking Democrat on the HouseJudiciary Committee, asked the Democratic staff to conduct an investigationinto irregularities reported in the Ohio presidential election and toprepare a Status Report concerning the same prior to the Joint Meeting ofCongress scheduled for January 6, 2005, to receive and consider the votes ofthe electoral college for president. The following Report includes a briefchronology of the events; summarizes the relevant background law; providesdetailed findings (including factual findings and legal analysis); anddescribes various recommendations for acting on this Report going forward.

We have found numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohiopresidential election, which resulted in a significant disenfranchisement ofvoters. Cumulatively, these irregularities, which affected hundreds ofthousand of votes and voters in Ohio, raise grave doubts regarding whetherit can be said the Ohio electors selected on December 13, 2004, were chosenin a manner that conforms to Ohio law, let alone federal requirements andconstitutional standards.

This report, therefore, makes three recommendations: (1) consistent withthe requirements of the United States Constitution concerning the countingof electoral votes by Congress and Federal law implementing theserequirements, there are ample grounds for challenging the electors from theState of Ohio; (2) Congress should engage in further hearings into thewidespread irregularities reported in Ohio; we believe the problems areserious enough to warrant the appointment of a joint select Committee of theHouse and Senate to investigate and report back to the Members; and (3)Congress needs to enact election reform to restore our people's trust in ourdemocracy. These changes should include putting in place more specificfederal protections for federal elections, particularly in the areas ofaudit capability for electronic voting machines and casting and counting ofprovisional ballots, as well as other needed changes to federal and stateelection laws.

With regards to our factual finding, in brief, we find that there weremassive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. Inmany cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct andillegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. KennethBlackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.

First, in the run up to election day, the following actions by Mr.Blackwell, the Republican Party and election officials disenfranchisedhundreds of thousands of Ohio citizens, predominantly minority andDemocratic voters:

Â The misallocation of voting machines led to unprecedented longlines that disenfranchised scores, if not hundreds of thousands, ofpredominantly minority and Democratic voters. This was illustrated by thefact that the Washington Post reported that in Franklin County, "27 of the30 wards with the most machines per registered voter showed majorities forBush. At the other end of the spectrum, six of the seven wards with thefewest machines delivered large margins for Kerry." (See Powell and Slevin,supra). Among other things, the conscious failure to provide sufficientvoting machinery violates the Ohio Revised Code which requires the Boards ofElections to "provide adequate facilities at each polling place forconducting the election."

Â Mr. Blackwell's decision to restrict provisional ballots resultedin the disenfranchisement of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of voters,again predominantly minority and Democratic voters. Mr. Blackwell's decisiondeparted from past Ohio law on provisional ballots, and there is no evidencethat a broader construction would have led to any significant disruption atthe polling places, and did not do so in other states.

Â Mr. Blackwell's widely reviled decision to reject voterregistration applications based on paper weight may have resulted inthousands of new voters not being registered in time for the 2004 election.

Â The Ohio Republican Party's decision to engage in pre-election"caging" tactics, selectively targeting 35,000 predominantly minority votersfor intimidation had a negative impact on voter turnout. The Third Circuitfound these activities to be illegal and in direct violation of consentdecrees barring the Republican Party from targeting minority voters for pollchallenges.

Â The Ohio Republican Party's decision to utilize thousands ofpartisan challengers concentrated in minority and Democratic areas likelydisenfranchised tens of thousands of legal voters, who were not onlyintimidated, but became discouraged by the long lines. Shockingly, thesedisruptions were publicly predicted and acknowledged by Republicanofficials: Mark Weaver, a lawyer for the Ohio Republican Party, admitted thechallenges "can't help but create chaos, longer lines and frustration."

Â Mr. Blackwell's decision to prevent voters who requested absenteeballots but did not receive them on a timely basis from being able toreceive provisional ballots 6 likely disenfranchised thousands, if not tensof thousands, of voters, particularly seniors. A federal court found Mr.Blackwell's order to be illegal and in violation of HAVA.

Second, on election day, there were numerous unexplained anomalies andirregularities involving hundreds of thousands of votes that have yet to beaccounted for:

Â There were widespread instances of intimidation andmisinformation in violation of the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Actof 1968, Equal Protection, Due Process and the Ohio right to vote. Mr.Blackwell's apparent failure to institute a single investigation into thesemany serious allegations represents a violation of his statutory duty underOhio law to investigate election irregularities.

Â We learned of improper purging and other registration errors byelection officials that likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of votersstatewide. The Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition projects thatin Cuyahoga County alone over 10,000 Ohio citizens lost their right to voteas a result of official registration errors.

Â There were 93,000 spoiled ballots where no vote was cast forpresident, the vast majority of which have yet to be inspected. The problemwas particularly acute in two precincts in Montgomery County which had anundervote rate of over 25% each - accounting for nearly 6,000 voters whostood in line to vote, but purportedly declined to vote for president.

Â There were numerous, significant unexplained irregularities inother counties throughout the state: (i) in Mahoning county at least 25electronic machines transferred an unknown number of Kerry votes to the Bushcolumn; (ii) Warren County locked out public observers from vote countingciting an FBI warning about a potential terrorist threat, yet the FBI statesthat it issued no such warning; (iii) the voting records of Perry countyshow significantly more votes than voters in some precincts, significantlyless ballots than voters in other precincts, and voters casting more thanone ballot; (iv) in Butler county a down ballot and underfunded DemocraticState Supreme Court candidate implausibly received more votes than the bestfunded Democratic Presidential candidate in history; (v) in Cuyahoga county,poll worker error may have led to little known third-party candidatesreceiving twenty times more votes than such candidates had ever received inotherwise reliably Democratic leaning areas; (vi) in Miami county, voterturnout was an improbable and highly suspect 98.55 percent, and after 100percent of the precincts were reported, an additional 19,000 extra voteswere recorded for President Bush.

Third, in the post-election period we learned of numerous irregularitiesin tallying provisional ballots and conducting and completing the recountthat disenfranchised thousands of voters and call the entire recountprocedure into question (as of this date the recount is still not complete):

Â Mr. Blackwell's failure to articulate clear and consistentstandards for the counting of provisional ballots resulted in the loss ofthousands of predominantly minority votes. In Cuyahoga County alone, thelack of guidance and the ultimate narrow and arbitrary review standardssignificantly contributed to the fact that 8,099 out of 24,472 provisionalballots were ruled invalid, the highest proportion in the state.

Â Mr. Blackwell's failure to issue specific standards for therecount contributed to a lack of uniformity in violation of both the DueProcess Clause and the Equal Protection Clauses. We found innumerableirregularities in the recount in violation of Ohio law, including (i)counties which did not randomly select the precinct samples; (ii) countieswhich did not conduct a full hand court after the 3% hand and machine countsdid not match; (iii) counties which allowed for irregular marking of ballotsand failed to secure and store ballots and machinery; and (iv) countieswhich prevented witnesses for candidates from observing the various aspectsof the recount.

Â The voting computer company Triad has essentially admitted thatit engaged in a course of behavior during the recount in numerous countiesto provide "cheat sheets" to those counting the ballots. The cheat sheetsinformed election officials how many votes they should find for eachcandidate, and how many over and under votes they should calculate to matchthe machine count. In that way, they could avoid doing a full county-widehand recount mandated by state law.

2 Comments:

Yes undoubtedly, in some moments I can say that I agree with you, but you may be in the light of other options.to the article there is stationary a suspect as you did in the decrease delivery of this solicitation www.google.com/ie?as_q=error repair professional 3.7 ?I noticed the catch-phrase you have not used. Or you profit by the dark methods of helping of the resource. I take a week and do necheg